The benevolent banner., 1887-09-03


mical as we'll. Within the past six
months two men have been killed
outright, one IN Mississippi and one
in Georgia, and many others have
been warned" and browbeaten, for
attempting to explain to colored lab
orers the injustice practiced on them
by employers; SO that the colored
laboring masses of that section are
fast falling into a condition not un-
like In its terrible features the chat
tie slavery abolished by constitu-
tional enactment.
We have it in the newspapers and
we have it from the lips of our own
men fresh from all sections of the
South that the condition of the col
ored laborers of their sections is
simply atrocious and appalling, that
the employers OF such labor, backed
up by simple Legislation and by all
the machinery of the law, are simply
tyrannical in the conduct of their
affairs, in so far that colored laborers
have no "appeal from Caesar drunk
to Caesar sober"
ATTITUDE OF THE PRESS AND THE
POLITICIANS.
1t is remarkable state of the
case that the entire press of the
North has ceased to dwell upon the
state of affairs III the South in other
than wishy-washy way, chronlcling
such outrages as cannot we'll be pas
sed over in silence as news matter
but putting such matter In such
shape as invariably to make the col
ored person guilty of all that is
charged upon him and excusing
those who constitute themselves
Judge and jury in the execution of
the mob's decree; while it is in ex-
ceedingly rare instances that the mis-
deeds of individual offenders ever
find voice in the press. The peo-
pie suffer in silence. This should
not be. They should have voice.
The grievances they are forced to
suffer should be known of all the
world and they must be. An organ
ization national in its rami6cations,
such as we propose, would be such a
voice, and so loud that il would COM
pei men to hear it; for if it were
silenced in the South, it would be
all the louder in the North and the
West. Indeed, the first work of the
League, it seems to me must be that
of thorough organization, and then
of agitation. When once the organ
ization is effected the work of agi-
tation, will, in some sense, be easy.
THE COLOR LINE BUGBEAR.
Whenever colored men talk ofform-
ing anything in which they are TO be
the prime movers and their griev-
ances are to be the subject 10 be agi-
tated, vast array of men, mostly
politicians aud newspapers, more or
less nartisan. and therefore interested
in keeping colored voters in help
less state as far as disorganization
and absence of responsible leadership
can effect this, cry aloud that color
ed men should be the last persons TO
draw the color line!' So they should
be. so they have been; and they would
never have drawn any such line, or
proposed that any such should be
drawn, if white men had not first
drawn ii, and continue to draw 1t
now in religion, in politics. in educa-
tlonal matters, in all morel move
ments. like that of Temperance for in
stance. We have not drawn the line.
The A. VI. L. church. probably the
strongest aud most inhue ential color
ed organization in the United States
did its Toun lers establish it because
they did not care 10 worship with
their white co-religionists: Not BIT
of ii. They established that magnifi-
cant religious organization Is re-
buke and protest to the peanut gal
lery accommodation offered by white
Christians, ,so-called, to colored Chris
; tians. The same spirit actuated the
founder of the Zion A. VI. +. church,